As war began, U.S. generals feuded

The Iraq war was barely a week old when General Tommy Franks threatened to fire the U.S. Army's field commander.

From the first day of the invasion, in March 2003, American forces had tangled with thousands of Saddam Fedayeen paramilitary fighters. General William Wallace, who was leading the army's 5th Corps toward Baghdad, had told two reporters that his soldiers needed to delay their advance on the Iraqi capital to suppress the Fedayeen threat in the rear.

Soon after, Franks phoned Lieutenant General David McKiernan, the head of allied land forces, to warn that he might relieve Wallace.

The firing was averted after McKiernan flew to meet Franks.But the episode revealed the deep disagreements within the U.S. high command about the Iraqi military threat and what would be required to defeat it.

The dispute, related by senior military officers and their aides in interviews, had lasting consequences. The unexpected tenacity of the Fedayeen in the battles for Nasiriya, Samawa, Najaf and other towns on the road to Baghdad was an early indication that the adversary was not merely Saddam Hussein's vaunted Republican Guard.

The paramilitary Fedayeen were numerous, well armed, dispersed throughout the countryand seemingly determined to fight to the death. But while many officers in the field assessed the Fedayeen as a dogged foe, Franks and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld saw them as little more than a speed bump on the way to Baghdad.

Three years later, Iraq has yet to be subdued. While the outcome of the drive to Baghdad is clear, how some of the key decisions in the war were made and some significant episodes are largely unknown.

Among them:

A U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer warned after the bloody battle at Nasiriya, the first major fight of the war, that the Fedayeen would continue to mount attacks after the fall of Baghdad since many of the fighters were being bypassed in the race to the capital.

In an extraordinary improvisation, Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi exile leader who was a Pentagon favorite, was flown to southern Iraq with hundreds of his fighters as Franks's command sought to put an "Iraqi face" on the invasion. The plan was set in motion without the knowledge of top administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and George Tenet, the CIA director.

Instead of sending additional troops to stabilize the country after the fall of Baghdad, Rumsfeld and Franks canceled the deployment of the 1st Cavalry Division.McKiernan was unhappy with the decision, which was made at a time when ground forces were needed to deal with the chaos in Iraq.

This account of decision-making inside the U.S. command is based on interviews with dozens of military officers and government officials. Some asked to remain unnamed because they were speaking about sensitive internal deliberations that they were not authorized to discuss publicly.

As American-led forces prepared to invade Iraq, U.S. intelligence was not projecting a major fight in southern Iraq. CIA officials told U.S. commanders that anti-Saddam tribes might secure a vital Euphrates River bridge and provide other support. Tough resistance was not expected until army and marinetroops began to close in on Baghdad.

Almost from the start, however, the troops found themselves fighting the Fedayeen and Baath Party paramilitary forces. The Fedayeen was formed in the mid-1990s to suppress any Shiite revolts. Equipped with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms, they wore civilian dress and were positioned in southern Iraq. The first American to die in combat was shot by a paramilitary fighter.

After Nasiriya, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Apodaca, a Marine intelligence officer, drafted a classified message concluding that the Fedayeen would continue to be a threat. Many had sought sanctuary in small towns that were bypassed in the rush to Baghdad.

The colonel compared the Fedayeen to insurgencies in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Colombia and warned that unless U.S. soldiers went after them in force, the enemy would continue their attacks after Baghdad fell, hampering efforts to stabilize Iraq.